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Kind of scary to think that so many wonder drugs / materials / metals of the past have proven to be so catastrophically bad for us. Makes you wonder how many of today's wonder resources will be tomorrow's villains. Oh and the author forgot to mention one thing: heavy metals last forever. So while they occur naturally, industrial activities (e.g. burning fuel, industrial processes, etc) release them into our environment, increasing our exposure to them. This British Medical Bulletin paper shows the explosive growth in production and emissions of select toxic metals from 1850–1990: http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/68/1/167.long